On Friday 6th October 2017, Inminds human rights group will protest outside the UK headquarters of the Israeli Bank Leumi that has been blacklisted by the United Nations Human Rights Council for violating international law by profiteering from Israel's illegal settlements built on stolen Palestinian land.

Bank Leumi, whose largest share holder is the Israeli state, provides services and financing for the construction of Israeli settlements, in particular its implicated in the settlements of Har Homa, Alfei Manashe, Efrat, Ma'ale Adumin, Tzofim, Ariel, Beitar illit, Oranit, Pisgat Ze'ev, and Kiryat Arba; in the settlement neighbourhoods of Ramot and Gilo in East Jerusalem, and in Katzrin in the Golan Heights. The bank is also guilty of bankrolling the Jerusalem Light Rail project which solidifies the colonisation of Palestinian land by connecting the settler colonies around Jerusalem.

A billboard advertises a special offer for a mortgage by Bank Leumifor constructing in Zufin settlement. (Photo: Who Profits)

Inminds chair Abbas Ali said "Apartheid Bank Leumi has been identified by the United Nations Human Rights Council as perpetrating war crimes in its bankrolling of Israeli colonies on stolen Palestinian land. Human Rights Watch report on 'Israeli Law and Banking in West Bank Settlements' published just last month concludes that "Israeli banks are financing settlement construction and facilitating settlement expansion as a matter of choice, not because they are somehow required to do so under domestic law". So Bank Leumi cannot even plead the nazi Nuremberg defense that they were just following orders. They choose to commit war crimes. Our protest will expose this criminal entity, Londoners will be shocked to learn that this bank, located at the heart of our city, a few metres from Oxford Street is bankrolling suffering, ethnic cleansing, and death in Palestine."

Leader of the Palestinian Human Rights Defenders group, Badee Dwaik, from the occupied Palestinian city of Al-Khalil, will address the protest. Al-Khalil (Hebron) has seen some of the worst settler violence, where a few hundred fanatical zionist colonists, protected by an Israeli army of occupation, terrorize 30,000 Palestinian residents on a daily basis in order to force them out, to ethnically cleanse them from their homes.

Inminds chair Abbas Ali said "In March this year, on Land Day, Badee Dwaik and his comrades were attacked by fanatical colonists from the infamous Kiryat Arba settlement in Hebron, where the mass murderer Baruch Goldstein is worshipped and the gassing of Arabs promoted. The army then continued the attack and arrested the leaders. Their only crime was to plant an olive tree on Palestinian land. Bank Leumi is guilty of providing financial services to Kiryat Arba, the settlement's property taxes are saved in Leumi Bank and it has opened branches for the fanatics to use. At the time, we held a vigil in London outside the BBC demanding the media report on the plight of the human rights defenders and to demand their freedom. So we are very pleased and honoured that 6 months later, Badee Dwaik is free and in London to share his experience of non-violent resistance against illegal settlements and occupation. "

Please join us outside Bank Leumi, just opposite Bond Street tube station (corner of Forever21) at 3pm on Friday 6th October 2017.

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"Scalp bounties were the payment of a fee for proof of death of an Indian, any Indian, on a graduated scale. At the top of the scale they would pay the highest amount for proof of death by way of the production of a scalp, or bloody red skin - origin of the term 'red skins' - of an adult male Indian. Half that fee would be payed for proof of death by the same means of a adult female, quarter to be payed for proof of death of a child, child being defined as as a human being under 10 years of age down to and including a fetus.. every single colony on the east coast, every state of the Union and territory of the United States within the confines of the 48 contiguous states, had in place, in some period of its history, a scalp bounty - removed usually when there were no longer sufficient number of Indians left to kill to warrant its continuation..that's as absolutely clinical a genocidal policy as is possible to envision, they weren't interested in any particular Indians, any Indians would do and they would pay for proof of death - they wanted all of us dead."